Participants at this year’s Dubai Arbitration Week gathered for the ICC conference hosted by Al Tamimi & Co on 14 November 2018. The conference featured a lively roundtable discussion on the subject of “Arbitrator Disclosure – Local Flavour or International Standards?” chaired by Nadia Darwazeh. The panel comprised practitioners from across the MENA region and…

Arbitrator neutrality remains an imperative prerequisite in international commercial arbitration. After all, the primary advantage of arbitration is that parties have the ability to choose their own decision-makers. The issue of advance waivers typically arises at the time of appointment, when the arbitrator reserves the right to continue as an arbitrator despite the occurrence of…

Arbitration is one of the preferred modes of private dispute settlement. Off its several traits, the cornerstone is the fact that it is based primarily on party autonomy and enables the parties to control almost all aspect of it. On the other hand, States put in place a different review and/or control mechanism on the…

The English High Court has reinforced its pro-arbitration stance in two recent judgments in the case of P v Q [2017] EWHC 148 (Comm.) and [2017] EWHC 194 (Comm.). Much attention has been devoted to the failed application under section 24 of the English Arbitration Act 1996 (the “Act”) to remove the arbitral tribunal on…

In many ways, Portugal is a remarkable arbitration-friendly jurisdiction. Not only a new UNICTRAL Model based law has been enacted a few years back now, but also its courts have proved to be very supportive of arbitration. The deference that they have been showing to the validity of the arbitration clause inserted in derivatives master…

A group of lawyers has been coveted in recent years by the most prestigious law firms. They are supposed to predict results more accurately than Gary Born, create more persuasive stories than Stanimir Alexandrov and even issue better awards than Gabrielle Kauffman-Kohler. Their names are Watson, Ross, Lex Machina and Compas – they are Machine…

Arbitration has become a preferred method for the resolution of international commercial disputes in Russia, mostly thanks to the activities of the Moscow-based International Commercial Arbitration Court (“ICAC“, the Russian acronym “MKAS“) at the RF Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Established in 1932 as the Foreign Trade Arbitration Commission placed under the USSR National Chamber…

and Jose Luis Repetto Deville, Miranda & Amado Recently, the First Commercial Chamber of the Superior Court of Lima issued an annulment decision in the case MDIS v. CORAL. The court had to deal with an arbitral award rendered by two arbitrators that had been challenged (without the participation of the other arbitrator) and while…

By: Kiran N. Gore and Alexandros Diplas The Blog recently featured a book review of the recently published Challenges and Recusals of Judges and Arbitrators in International Courts and Tribunals, edited by Professor Chiara Giorgetti of University of Richmond Law School. This review was a timely follow up to the December 10, 2015 book launch…

Challenges of arbitrators seem to have become increasingly common in international investment arbitral proceedings, yet they also seem to be seldom successful. Challenges and Recusals of Judges and Arbitrators in International Courts and Tribunals, a new edited volume by Chiara Giorgetti, analyses arbitrators and judges’ challenges and addresses some fundamental, related questions: What does the…

and Alessa Pang, Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP Arbitrator challenges for inordinate delay can be awkward. However, what happens if the arbitrator decides to render an award before the challenge is concluded? Does rendering the award resolve the matter? Under Article 14(1) of the UNCITRAL Model Law (“Model Law”), an arbitrator’s mandate may be terminated…

The ICSID Convention threshold for arbitrators’ challenges, upholding challenges only if arbitrators exhibit a manifest lack of the qualities required to sit as arbitrators (Art. 57 ICSID Convention), has in the past been criticized as being too strict. Recently, however, few decisions, discussed in this post, seem to show that the ICSID “manifest” threshold is…

The Danish Institute of Arbitration (“DIA”) revised its rules effective May 1, 2013, an overhaul from the prior 2008 iteration of its rules that brings the DIA rules into line with those of leading arbitral institutions. As part of these revisions, the DIA has both reorganized the structure of its rules and updated various key…

Co-authored by Christopher Boog and Benjamin Moss, Schellenberg Wittmer An arbitral tribunal’s duty to render an enforceable award is frequently used by commentators and counsel alike in support of positions on myriad matters ranging from procedural fairness and jurisdiction to the application of mandatory foreign law. Its considerable malleability has indeed made it very attractive…

As its Council Member I attended the ICC Institute of World Business Law’s 32nd annual meeting on ‘Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration’ held in Paris on 26 November 2012. It was a grand success as it drew many professionals, arbitrators, experts, academic specialists and, above all, representatives from some major third-party funding bodies such as…

By Claudia Ludwig and Jennifer Hartzler Whenever a hearing in an arbitration is on the horizon, the question of how far you can go in preparing your witnesses arises. Apart from particularly litigious clients, most clients will not have appeared as a witness in an arbitration or any other proceedings before. They are therefore regularly…

What makes an international arbitrator different from a national judge? All of us in the arbitration world have a pretty solid answer to this question. At what point do the distinctions between an international arbitrator and an international judge melt away? That’s a bit of a trickier question, depending on the case. With the increase…

The recently published abstracts of LCIA Court decisions on arbitrator challenges between 1996 and 2010 (Arbitration International, vol. 27, no. 3, 2011) make surprisingly interesting reading. They are an important reminder of the types of egregious arbitrator conduct that, while fortunately rare, can give the system a bad name unless promptly corrected. At the same…

Arbitration practitioners have traditionally had very little illumination into the outcomes, let alone the reasoning, of arbitrator challenge decisions. Few arbitral institutions set out in writing to the parties the reasons for their challenge decisions, and even fewer institutions have made these decisions available to the larger arbitration community. Past posts on this blog have…